


motionless wheel

by Elendraug



Category: Final Fantasy VIII
Genre: Alcohol, Established Relationship, Fluff, Literal Sleeping Together, M/M, Marijuana, Memory Loss, Mind/Mood Altering Substances, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-17
Updated: 2020-08-24
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:54:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23191228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elendraug/pseuds/Elendraug
Summary: with your gentle spirit, I am not afraid.
Relationships: Zell Dincht/Squall Leonhart
Comments: 4
Kudos: 6





	1. 🌩️

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Pyrasaur](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pyrasaur/gifts), [kt_vundr](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kt_vundr/gifts).



> happy birthday Zell, I love you
> 
> I ~~'m too frazzled by the world right now to post and edit this correctly but 3/17 is his birthday and it was important to me to post this before it passed midnight UTC~~
> 
> ~~hang in there everybody~~
> 
> phew okay it's 8/23 and I'm finally updating this
> 
> happy birthday Squall, I love you
> 
> the concept of time compression sure hits different during quarantine
> 
> these two have been an OTP of mine for a long time
> 
> pyra, thank you for talking about them with me and for years of rereading ["circles"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/147578)
> 
> kt_vundr, thank you for giving the world the [squall/zell novel](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19141756) it's always desperately needed
> 
> fun fact, this fic was inspired by mishearing song lyrics as "we can go together drunk and high" so [excuse me while I kiss this guy](https://www.kissthisguy.com/)
> 
> ♫ [bôa - elephant](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRys2lib9GA)  
> ♫ [zero 7 - in the waiting line](https://youtu.be/G5KbL4LAUL8)

There’s something to be said about the way Squall’s bangs fall in front of his forehead, as his paperback falls from his hand and his weight shifts to rest against Zell’s shoulder. What it is exactly, though, remains just out of his reach, on the tip of his tongue, a _je ne sais quoi_ for which he’s forgotten the words.

He reaches over to retrieve the book before its pages can crumple, closes it and sets it beside them on the couch cushion, slowly enough to prevent Squall from stirring from sleep. It’s easy to slip an arm around him, to grab for a throw pillow to support his skull as gravity draws him downward, slumping to settle sideways, shoulder against Zell’s thigh not for the first time.

_Comfortable_ would be an understatement for the peace that permeates the shared quiet between them; Zell’s languid high complements Squall’s drowsy buzz, and he lifts a heavy limb to run his fingers through the long strands of hair that frame his face. Squall shifts with a small sound that curls its way into Zell’s ribcage and pulls tight behind his sternum. The next sound is a sigh, the gentle thunder following the precision strike of fingertips tucking his hair behind his ear, then tracing over his earlobe, encircling his earring, grounded in an act of idle adoration.

Zell’s existence narrows in focus, everything coalescing into this one instant as Squall relaxes entirely, as a smile quirks the corner of his mouth. It’s rare as ball lightning, rare as a snow devil, phenomena no less intense for their infrequency, and it would warrant a photograph to memorialize the moment and prove its possibility to those who would disbelieve it. It would, but Zell has zero intention of ever violating the vulnerability entrusted to him in these circumstances, and it’s sufficient to bask in the simple sight of Squall’s features at ease.

He wants to bring him home, whether it’s to Balamb Garden or Balamb Town or somewhere else, somewhen stolen, a place they can’t quite place. He wants to wake up watching the way he exhales, wants to drift off with his arms falling asleep from being draped over and slid beneath him. If there’s any way to wish for what would otherwise seem impossible, he wonders if they could carve out new lives far away from all of this, with some kind of stony subterranean sunlight, kept safe out of reach from those who would only see the tundra at the surface.

But Shumi Village is itself a memory he finds in fleeting glimpses, when he remembers that he’s forgetting, static and snow interchangeably describing the mental images’ refusal to manifest when he unsuccessfully summons a recollection. It’s better to be here with him, wherever _here_ may happen to be from moment to moment, stroking down from Squall’s scalp to the relative cool of silver trailing across his throat.

Zell smiles down at him and couldn’t consider moving for anything less than the end of the world. Even if this were his last night here with him, it’s where he would want to be.

And maybe that’s sappy, but maybe he’s all right with it for once, and maybe someday someone will remind him of what it was he wanted.


	2. 🌨️

_[Energy](https://www.sivasakti.com/tantra/other-hindu-deities/shiva-the-god-of-destruction/) is his name, and he moves through all things, never static._

* * *

There’s nothing to be said as Squall’s bangs fall in front of his forehead, as his temples alert him to the ache drawn from dehydration, as his yawning triggers tears and his weight shifts to lift his neck from Zell’s lap. What it is exactly, though, remains flash frozen, compartmentalized where it can’t be touched, details inaccessible as if through frosted glass, through ice over a lake.

He reaches over to retrieve his book, fumbling to find the weight of paper, its spine at a more accommodating angle than his own. With its presence confirmed he returns to a lowered level of disconcertion, dizzied still by distance or lack thereof, skull weighed down with the gravity of reentry, sinking towards the places he thinks he knew, the ones he’s forgotten less. 

Squall rubs at his eyes with his wrist, slips his necklace inside his shirt to rest metal cool and reassuring at his sternum, gradually brought to body temperature. Its equilibrium inverts the extremes, of the warmth after skin has gone numb, when the bite of cold burns, of nerve endings unsure how to process sensory input.

But Zell smells familiar, with the ocean in the air, the Balamb breeze carrying with it the sparked smoke from his grandfather’s pipe, from the strain his mother grows to alleviate the ache of hosting deified electrical discharge in his brain, a distinct Dincht tradition for treating the side effects of military service. When Zell exhales it’s out the window, out of range for it to set off Squall’s aversion to the scent, where he in turn sips vodka smooth as sea glass worn by time and tides, attuned to the lowered freezing point of spirits and saltwater, to subtleties of texture and temperature affecting taste like water from disparate taps even if no one else thinks his particular preferences make sense, downed on the opposite side of the remodeled room to avoid reminding Zell of past hangovers he no longer wants to relive.

There’s solace in measured moments of destruction, a far cry from the crises aboard the Ragnarok, of spacetime shattering in the void, all existence distilled to a singularity disrupted by the overwound impact of a feather or flower landing on thin ice. Through persistence they’ve found shared ways to capture fragments of calm, thoughts slowed as if submerged into liquid nitrogen, a current chasing itself eternally unto superconducted stasis. Together, at once or always, they’re united, unmoored in waveforms, deliberately delineating the partitions of their persons where the pieces have not yet been wiped away.

Back in their short forever, even in the discomfort of muscle cramps and stale saliva, Squall settles into the pillow, already indented from his cheek, still astonished to have been allowed into both his bedroom and his bed, when it’s too routine to regard himself as too much of a mess to inhabit a meticulously curated space. Zell’s arm finds him again in the dark, snaked over his ribs for the remaining duration of their gradual thaw from self-imposed mental hibernation. Squall grabs for his hand to guide it further, to rest it above where the pendant hides beneath his shirt, hangs heavily over his heart. 

When dawn darts away from overnight chill they’ll make breakfast downstairs to take to the beach, this crafted happenstance one grain of sand taken for whatever it’s worth among an infinite hourglass of missed chances to find what they want after the end of it all, paradoxically past a postponed apocalypse. Until then, Zell’s breathing lifts his body beneath the back of Squall’s head, his fingertips trailing across fabric, feeling for the line of the chain until the touch singes tension out of him, cauterized, soothed with hair standing on end at the nape of his neck, until they both fall back into dreamless sleep, as still as ash settled like snowfall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ice goddess go brrrr  
> lightning god go bzzzz
> 
> or, That Feel When Different GFs


End file.
